I've been messaging with another possible collaborator, a punk/SM fetish artist I've connected with on Facebook. He's done some comics in the past, but he's currently hesitant to do "commissions" (he mostly draws stuff that he likes then sells prints) but I sent him a couple scripts to look over (one set at a punk show, the other involving a biker), and he said they looked really fun and asked what specs I needed for the art. :-bd We're now in the awkward phase of discussing money (he didn't have a figure, so I named one....), so it could still fall thru, but I'm hopeful. :-SS
Feb. 8th... I *might* (crosses fingers) be able to make that show. I'm not sure if they allow photography, but I'd take a photo of your display *if* I can get there.
Memo to self: When the process of inking is totally frustrating and the results look like badly drawn crap, it's because you weren't finished figuring it out with the pencils.
After three days of no response to my "well, the last guy I did this with, I paid $X", I poked my potential collaborator with a "what do you think"? follow-up. I've reached the point where I'd rather risk a "no" than just wonder.
Good news, everyone! I just got a reply from the artist I've been hitting on, and he agreed! He's going to do one of the two 5-pagers I showed him ("Hardcore", about hooking up at a punk concert), and if that goes well, he'll do the other. Since he's now on board, I can say who it is: He goes by the name Drubskin, and he's been drawing punk/skin/fetish porn for 25 years. A story he drew for Dale Lazarov a few years ago was picked for a "best gay erotica" book, which was my introduction to his work. This (along with Rick's) should help juice up the average raunch level, compared to the more sentimental(ish) stories that I've been drawing myself.
While some kind of ongoing relationship might be nice, I'm more focused on one-night stands... with the possibility of additional hookups in the future, of course. Both Rick and Drub have their own things going, and aren't in the habit of working for other people like this, but I was able to offer each of them a story or two that appealed to their personal interests, and which wouldn't tie them up for very long. I'll reach out to other artists the same way. It adds variety to the project for both me and the readers, and I hope might eventually draw artists to approach me to do a story: for a fun change of pace, a little income between projects, and some additional exposure. Meanwhile, the same promiscuity would expose my work to other creators' fans, who might take further interest in it, increase the pool of potential Kickstarter backers, grow the audience, etc. Lather, rinse, repeat. At least that's the plan.
I had resolved to get at least two pages of my other Batman-and-Robin themed story finished on time for Rick's art show, opening in February. I've now finished coloring three, and I'm going to try for a fourth (which is currently just roughs).
I just got a new deadline for finishing "Everybody's Doin' It': April Fool's Day (possibly including color, otherwise grayscale). That's a couple months sooner than I'd been led to expect. Still do-able however. Just gotta put the "Batman on Robin" piece to bed, and hop back over onto that one.
Yep... life throws curveballs and sure enough that time will always shrink. Nowadays I *never* count on a long projected deadline. I've been burned too many times.
...and the answer is that it's gonna be grayscale, at least for the anthology this deadline is for.
Which actually means more work, because it's probably eventually going to be included in one of Dale's books (in color), so I'll have to do the fill-in-between-the-lines part twice. Or do it in color then convert that to gray and adjust the values so it still looks good.
It's also disappointing that it won't be color, because part of the theme of the story is the racial/ethnic diversity of the cast. They'll still be different shades of gray, but they'll lose the varying mixes of pink and pigment... and all the other coloring choices I made when I started.
Of the four pages I got finished in time for the "Batman on Robin" show Rick is going to use pages 3 and/or 4. Which is where the sex starts. I guess I should've worked on pages 5 and 6 instead of 1 and 2. Which I already posted in the "show your work" thread, so here are 3 and 4:
Drub sent me pencils (rough in places) of all five pages, and they look great! There are places where he deviated from the script, mostly by using more panels than I asked for. There are a few spots where he didn't show something I asked for, but it still works, so that's not a problem. I do need him to fix my hair though ... that kid looks almost respectable. :O Of course that's what this stage in the process is for.
With "Everybody's Doin' It" in the home stretch, I'm looking at the status of everything else I'm working on, deciding what to do next. I'm not gonna do a bunch of status bars, but here's a quick run-down, roughly in priority order:
"Everybody" - Done except for a little inking, then corrections and gray tones for the whole thing. I want it in color, but I'll leave that until (if) an opportunity comes along to print it that way. No lettering needed, because Dale doesn't do dialog.
"Dark Night" (the second Batman/Robin cosplay story) - 4 out of 6 pages all done, including colors and letters. Completing those 2 pages is next on my list.
"Hardcore" is out for illustration. So is "Hawg", another 5-pager I'm hoping Drub will do when he's finished with this one. I'll add color (and letters for "Hawg" ("Hardcore" is wordless)) when they come in.
I have 6 other stories in hand (a total of 28 pages) fully colored and lettered (if needed). I think I want to redo the lettering on some of those with a different font though.
I have another 7 stories (48 pages) in some state of illustration, ranging from partially roughly pencilled to fully inked. I need to finish these, dammit!
And more scripts (at least a couple dozen) than I know what to do with. Time to start sending e-mails to artists.
Meanwhile there are unrelated pieces, like the Alice/Peter/Christopher meeting that I'd like to finalize and find someone to illustrate. I also have a 48-page Peter Pan story that's been sitting in a drawer for years that I'd like to get someone drawing (because if it has to wait for me to do it, it'll be a comic that "never grows up").
After a few alterations based on notes from Dale (such as catching that I neglected to apply color to a condom), "Everybody's Doin' It" is officially in the can, and soon to be sent off for consideration for the Best Gay Erotica 2014 anthology. That's primarily a prose book, but has also included short comics, including a couple over the years written by my collaborator. The physical format is smaller than standard comics TPB, a little bigger than a mass-market paperback, and they apply the same margins to the comics pages as the text pages, so the comics are only about 4"x6" (and black and white). But it's print, and part of a long-running series put out by an established queer-press book publisher. And (if accepted) ... it pays. Between Dale's previous success getting included, and being Facebook-friends with the editor (who liked my Batman-on-Robin art) ... I'm optimistic.
With no deadlines on the horizon, I'm trying to tie up loose ends on all the pieces I've started. So I've made a list of everything where I have the art started, but it still needs lettering and/or coloring and/or finishing the damn pencils plus doing all the rest. I've put them in a spreadsheet, where I'm also putting an estimate of how many days each will take to finish, and another column to add up the days. According to this, it'll take me until the end of May to change every partially done JAQrabbit Tale (including the two currently in the hands of another artist) into totally done. You hear that? I'm committing to the end of May as a deadline for that. Which sounds like a lot of time, but that'll be 15 stories, and about 90 pages of material.
Just when I thought I was finished with it (I've submitted it for BGE14), the opening of Comixology Submit has Dale talking about us colorizing "Everybody's Doin' It" for sale thru them. By which he means me colorizing it. I'll wait until he gets approval from them for some of his other books, so I know for sure that it's worth the trouble.
Yes, COLOR! SO much can be emphasized with the use of color. Don't get me wrong, black & white is still good, but if we're talking about Comixology then it can only help.
And just when I thought my schedule for the next few months was entirely free for me to indulge my whims, I may have just found myself a new deadline. Zan Christensen of Northwest Press is putting together an anthology as a fund-raiser for Prism Comics, the LGBTWTFBBQ awareness organization. It's called Anything That Loves, and will be about the wibbly-wobbly space between hetero- and homosexuality. I have a few Tales scripted that fall into that zone, and there's one I think I can tweak for this book (downplaying the sex, more focus on the characters). I've inquired if the roster was finalized, and Zan said there would probably be room, as long as it fits the book's requirements ... and I get it illustrated by the end of April.
I've started drawing the Anything That Loves story, which is going to be 7 pages ... 6 if I run out of time and have to skip the final page, which is basicly an R-rated pin-up of two people wrestling naked. Given my usual rate of productivity, getting it done before May Day will be ... close.
This bumps the timeframe for everything else a couple months further down the road. Plus we're planning a 12-day field trip for the Baxter Street Home for Wayward Boys (to the Grand Canyon and LA by train) in July, which will create another hole in my productivity. So the goal of finishing every current work-in-progress, that I said 12 days ago that I'd reach by the end of May, is now looking like the end of August.
I have pencils (rough pencils for some panels, but definitely ink-ready for quite a few) finished for "Scout" (the Anything That Loves story). For a 7-page story, it surprises me how fast I got this far (without hating the results). Getting the look of Scout down has been a bit of a challenge. <SPOILER> She needs to be both androgynous and sexy (so, not SNL's "Pat"), so that the reader can be uncertain about her gender ... up to the point where it becomes obvious. The pretty, boyish facial features were easy enough to work out, and eventually I figured out a hairstyle that might've been worn in the 90s by either a club boi, or a bi-dyke.
Zan's seen the pages to-date, and knows the gist of the story beyond what's obvious from the pictures. He said the partial nudity (no naughty bits) was "definitely OK", so it sounds like, as long as I get it done on time, it'll be a shoo-in to be included in the book.
And now that Zan is listing me as a contributor in publicity materials, the only thing standing in the way of my piece being included is ... finishing the work. Which means that Anything That Loves is now looking like the leading contender to be my first time in print. [-O< And if the Kickstarter campaign does well enough, I might even ... get ... paid! $-)
Well, "paid" in this case would probably work out to less than I would've paid another artist to draw this piece. But yeah, it'd be nice. Between this, being hung in the art show last month, and the possibility of getting a piece into Best Gay Erotica at the end of the year ... 2013 could be a good one.
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http://sfbay.ca/ai1ec_event/batman-on-robin-group-show/
Or it's because you suck, but let's not go there.
Which actually means more work, because it's probably eventually going to be included in one of Dale's books (in color), so I'll have to do the fill-in-between-the-lines part twice. Or do it in color then convert that to gray and adjust the values so it still looks good.
It's also disappointing that it won't be color, because part of the theme of the story is the racial/ethnic diversity of the cast. They'll still be different shades of gray, but they'll lose the varying mixes of pink and pigment... and all the other coloring choices I made when I started.
This bumps the timeframe for everything else a couple months further down the road. Plus we're planning a 12-day field trip for the Baxter Street Home for Wayward Boys (to the Grand Canyon and LA by train) in July, which will create another hole in my productivity. So the goal of finishing every current work-in-progress, that I said 12 days ago that I'd reach by the end of May, is now looking like the end of August.
Zan's seen the pages to-date, and knows the gist of the story beyond what's obvious from the pictures. He said the partial nudity (no naughty bits) was "definitely OK", so it sounds like, as long as I get it done on time, it'll be a shoo-in to be included in the book.